Kateri Lanthier

THERE WAS SOMETHING IN MY DREAM ABOUT A CAT

I’m a nymph in the cumulonimbus, a mortar shell in the café.

You gave me a quivery unfocussed kiss. The dream-cat leapt from your head.

Our every kiss a power surge that sparked a rolling blackout.

Where the bee sucks, there suck I. Swooning astride the no-fault line.

How was it? Like trying to speak with dignity into a megaphone.

Like trying to hide your tears while strapped into the driver’s seat.

Audition here, coquettes and wags with the infernal cast of mind.

Meet me on the mondegreen, meet me in the jet stream.

The coral has osteoporosis. Don’t wake the infant snow squall.

You think cats don’t have shoulders? Just watch one muscle the door.

You can tug my forelock and lead me to slaughter but you can’t make me drink.

March rolls out the beige carpet. Roll the barrel over the falls.

POLITICOS

Scare quotes, scarecrows, sacred cows,

ripped from the headlines,

tossed in the bin. A real mess,

this time, unrecyclable.

Kids are making mountains out of mudhills.

It’s all one big smear campaign here.

A Sargasso sea of celebutantes,

starchitects, those who fall upward.

Champers on the balcony,

chanters below.

GPS led us

wrong way down the runway.

The police put on the kettle in the rain.

It beggars belief

in the bombproof bunker.

The liar in his lair,

a hideous hideout

of Corinthian concrete.

Even if we’re not invited to the party

we should go

as unsuspecting guests.

POOR BUTTERFLY

Stifled heartbeat wings.

Drunk on blood, 

sweat and tears, or so

they’ve all been told 

one time too many

down at the conservatory/

lab/

zinc bar.

Huge butterflies meander

like indecisive birds.

Can’t help if I prefer

the hummingbird’s lost lyrics

or the avidity of the chickadee.

REPORTING FROM NIGHT

An off-kilter brick oven

with a soft centre. Stiff limbs

in the kiln of a 2 a.m. bed.

I’m in the fever fight 

of my life when I get the call.

Who left these babies here?

Get up, get up,

for the zillionth, for the nonce,

tilt, whisper, “Shhhh

hhhhh.” A hiss to soothe.

In truth, a command

or a plea.

Mocking clocks:

the old one with two tongues,

the one with a blood-red colon.

Everyone in tears.

Everyone asleep.

Then day.

---

Kateri Lanthier sings to her three kids every day. She still remembers how it felt to play the cello, even though her calluses have vanished. She lives in Toronto, just a short walk up a sandbank from Lake Ontario.

Two Poems (Kateri Lanthier)

MAKESHIFT MEMORIAL

How to “pack light”? Darkness overflows from every carry-on.
While you live, you’re packing heat. And then the cold sets in.

Gather ye rosebuds, rock star. Go on, sword-swallow the pretties.
Fringed skirts flash in the prison-yard lights of the used car lot.

The dog attends His Master’s Voice; the cat’s a turntablist.
Yes, yes, rain looks like tears. It sounds like laughter in the gutter.

My pattern of behavior is obvious? Then solve my Rubik’s mood.
Run down that clock, little mouse, and whisker ‘1 am.’

Toes off the sustain pedal. Bass back in the case.
We had to cut our love tour short at the wistful terminus.

We tore the gauze of the ozone, ripped the veil from the butterflies.
The screen is our eternal flame, our festive firelog channel.

The walls have ears now deafened by the soundtrack of our lives:
The adenoidal buzz of the house fly and the faltering storefront sign.

I’m speaking from dead centre of a southbound arctic air mass.
Warm, warmer….Bye, ice floes…They left on a jet plane.

When you left, I took my temperature to peace talks in Geneva.
Oh, to be your split second! Not your makeshift memorial.

NIGHT SCHOOL

I started school at Immaculée-Conception, if you can believe it.
If you believe that, just step this way into my chalk drawing.

The freckles splotched on bamboo are the tears of a jilted wife?
Each day I find new beauty spots emblazoned by the sun.

He loves me not, he loves me past the melting point of steel.
Every streetlight’s a fixed star, a star burnt out at dawn.

Battledore and shuttlecock, hobbyhorse and peepshow.
I was a self-righting toy until you changed the rules.

Inside the glassy-eyed greenhouse, flowers amp up the heat.
Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose. Jeunes filles en fleur taunt teacher.

The view from here to the earth’s core is quite spectacular!
The light will slow-dance on those leaves whatever day you’ve had.

Beds of roses end as bubbles in the claw-foot tub.
It only takes one burning bush to set the hills on fire.

Mary Mary, quite contrary, labour movement leader.
I’ll say it: Mariolatry left gorgeous stains on glass.

Maids with centre-parted hair, knights-errant in distress.
The temple is a wreck, but just think what we learned from this.

They are madcap pseudo-ghazals, very much in the vein of my poem in The Walrus, "The Coin Under the Leftmost Sliding

Cup". A book of poems, Reporting from the Night, was published in 2011 by Iguana Books. An interview with Kateri is at

Toronto Poets. In a joint interview forthcoming in Boxcar Poetry Review with the American poet Dan Chelotti, Kateri in part 
addresses the "continental divide" between American and Canadian, British, and other English-language poetries:

"I read contemporary British poets quite closely for years – perhaps from a vague sense of Commonwealth connection  – 

and formed friendships with some on trips to London. I confess I had something of a bias against American poetry. It seemed

a vast, self-confident and self-absorbed place that hardly needed my attention. I’ve reformed, though! I’m a fan of the work 

of many contemporaries.... Poems travel the world at lightning speed now, and some of my closest Poetry World connections

are with poets in the States." Her other poems appear in Leveler and Canadian Poetries. Her website, katerilanthier.com is 

in the works.

-- Kateri Lanthier